London in Two Days

Gatwick South Terminal to Victoria Station

Once you arrive at Gatwick South Terminal (which can also be reached from North Terminal by a free 2-minute monorail), I find the easiest option for getting to London is taking the train. As you walk into the station hall, all the self-service train ticket machines are on your right. I find a return ticket, if you are staying short-term (under a month), is most useful, and paying for the Anytime Return ticket (approximately £40) is handy, as you can use it on most services to London Victoria, including the Gatwick Express. Additionally, you can use a card or Oyster travel card, but I find the plastic ticket easier.

The train journey into Victoria Station is very scenic, and it is interesting to look at the outskirts of London as you approach the city from the south. If you go on the Southern service, it stops at East Croydon and Clapham Junction (where people coming into London usually get on) and gets you there in approximately 35 minutes. However, I usually wait for and take the Gatwick Express, as it usually has Wi-Fi, plugs for a charger, drop-down tables on all seats, is very clean, has a storage place above your seat for general carry-on luggage, and is faster.

Victoria to London Bridge Quarter

As we were staying in the London Bridge Quarter, the next step was getting there on the Underground. As you depart Gatwick Express platforms 13/14, you go through the ticket machines and into the main hall area of Victoria Station. If you need to use the restroom while in the station, there are well-managed ones on the left as you leave the ticket machines, which are really handy. If you keep walking to exit the station, you can descend a flight of stairs into the Underground station.

Victoria Station is a useful transit spot, as it links up with several other lines within a few stops. At this time, having a London Underground map (e.g. on your phone or in your travel guide) is always a good next step. You have a number of payment options to use the Underground (e.g. card, paper ticket), but I always find an Oyster travel card the most useful. You can buy the card from a machine (or sometimes a nearby shop), and then top it up with whatever amount you expect to use for your trip (I usually find £20–£30 is enough). As we are going to the London Bridge Quarter, we follow the signs and use the escalators and stairs to take the following route: Victoria going east to Monument (Circle or District). Monument is a bit more of a walk than London Bridge (on the Jubilee Line), but it saves you changing lines – which can involve a lot of walking in some stations – so it's easier.

Monument to London Bridge Hotel

Once out of the Underground, you get a beautiful view of Tower Bridge and the Thames as you cross over London Bridge, and it is a short walk to London Bridge Hotel, where we were staying. The hotel is very clean and modern, and the staff are very friendly. It is also on a quiet street and incredibly close to the very impressive glass Shard building, which we ventured into for a drink later on. We got a Weekend Deal of approximately £130 for one night, which, based on it being a four-star hotel in a good area, is really good value – and you get free access to the minibar in some rooms, and a free drink at the bar, which is a major bonus!

London Bridge Hotel to Tate Modern

We were going to the Frida Kahlo exhibition in Tate Modern and decided to walk, as it is only 1km (approximately 20 minutes). My advice from my trips to London is to use the Underground when you want to get around the city quickly and go quite long distances, but you get a much better feel for the city by walking around and admiring the architecture, beautiful streets and general buzz. We set off from our hotel and walked along the curve of Southwark Street, heading west. I had not been to this area of London before this trip and found this area really full of eateries, pubs and food halls, like Borough Market, and it was fun being there on a Friday evening when everyone was meeting for after-work drinks outside the pubs. We walked along this street for a while, passing the Italian restaurant we would eat dinner in later, and then turned down Great Guildford Street before arriving at Tate Modern beside the Thames.

The Tate Modern building itself is really interesting, having previously been Bankside Power Station, which was a very large electricity generation plant but has now been reconfigured into the UK's national museum of international modern and contemporary art. We queued and then entered before going to the exhibition entrance in the Natalie Bell Building. The space inside the museum is really interesting, as it has a large internal hall which shows exhibitions of large-scale sculptural art that you can see from the upper floors.

The exhibition was very good, showing artworks by Frida Kahlo, her husband Diego Rivera and their contemporaries from Mexico, as well as pieces of her clothing and works by subsequent artists inspired by her work. I like how, in Tate Modern, the rooms in exhibitions are quite large, so you are able to get up close to view the artworks despite it being quite full. One fun aspect was that there was a tour of people there dressed in clothing inspired by Frida Kahlo, so it was almost like the artworks were coming to life! Once finished with the exhibition, we decided to see the Seagram Murals by Mark Rothko in Level 2 East, Room 10. I would recommend sitting on the middle bench and just being with your thoughts for about 10 to 15 minutes while viewing these profoundly sombre and meditative pieces. It's very quiet and dimly lit inside the room, which adds to the atmosphere. I found it interesting that the artworks were originally supposed to be murals for the luxury Four Seasons restaurant in Manhattan's Seagram Building (hence the name), but having eaten at the restaurant and been concerned by the capitalist setting, he changed his mind and withdrew from the contract, later giving them as a gift to the museum.

Tate Modern back to our hotel

Once we had finished the exhibition, we walked along by the Thames for a while, where you can see the Globe Theatre on your right, a reconstruction of Shakespeare's famous 1599 playhouse. As we were feeling a bit tired from all our walking, we noticed there was a river taxi – the Uber Boat by Thames Clippers – so we decided to get that back to near the hotel. A word of warning – this is best if you're going several stops, as the fee relates to zones, and paying approximately £10 for one stop was not what we had planned. However, it was still a fun experience being out on the water and definitely a good way to see London from the Thames if you want to go further.

Evening drink in the Shard

Once refreshed and relaxed at the hotel, we decided to take advantage of being so close to the Shard, so we walked up the street to it. The Shard has several restaurants and bars, but we had decided on Oblix East, as it has free entry and you do not need to book (generally – but be mindful if it is a very busy night). You enter at the side of the building (it has text on the column of the building about where to go in), where you join a short queue and go through a quick scan of your bag, etc., and then go up in the elevator to the 32nd floor. The cocktails were really good, and the staff were very professional, and with the DJ playing, it was a really nice atmosphere. I recommend going up around sunset, as we did, as you get an amazing view of the sun going down over London, and it's just a really relaxing vibe. We were not sitting exactly by the windows, but it is still a very nice view, as the windows are floor-to-ceiling, so everyone has a good angle to view outside.

Dinner in Southwark

We had booked dinner at an Italian restaurant nearby called O'Ver, which is a 5-minute walk from London Bridge Hotel. The Italian food was amazing – I had a very tasty tomato bruschetta, a lovely 'nduja and salami pizza, and a chocolate gelato, and you really got a lovely, authentic, relaxed Italian vibe with the interior and candles. The food was good value, and all the courses were excellent. There were families eating there, and it had a really easy vibe, which I also liked. We then walked back to the hotel and had a relaxing drink at the hotel bar before finishing for the day.

Check out and Underground back to Victoria

We checked out of the hotel with our bags and took our exact same route back to Victoria Station, which included walking to Monument and taking the Circle Line back to Victoria Station. We decided to do this, as Victoria has a left luggage office (behind WHSmith and further up the platform), so we reckoned it would save us going all the way back to the hotel again later in the day to pick up our bags (a round trip of potentially 1–2 hours). This is a useful tactic, especially when you are tired later in the day and the Underground is possibly busier.

Walk to Tate Britain and exhibition

Once we had dropped off our bags, we exited Victoria Station on foot and walked down Vauxhall Bridge Road towards the Thames (about 20 minutes) before arriving at Tate Britain for an exhibition about James McNeill Whistler, the famous 19th-century American artist. One piece of advice – if you are going to a main exhibition, I have usually found the exhibition entrance is beside the Atterbury Street way in, so if you go in that way, it usually saves a long walk through the building. The exhibition was really interesting, encompassing 150 paintings from across his life, including his famous portrait of his mother and the Nocturnes series, including his views of Venice and Valparaiso. An interesting fact was that he was an early exponent of branding and signed his later artworks with a butterfly signature. If you get time after an exhibition, Tate Britain has a massive collection of beautiful British art – and some examples we saw (at speed, as we were short on time) included Ophelia by Millais and Turner's landscapes.

Walk to Café

As we had a tour booked at Buckingham Palace and did not want to walk too much, we planned to stop at a café on our route up to the Palace. It took about 20 minutes to get to Parker, which is a very clean and organic café/bakery. We had pastries, juice, and a chicken and avocado sandwich, and it was all really tasty. A group of runners in their 20s were having a relaxing chat on the patio outside, drinking coffee, so you were really able to see that this is a local place where people can come and meet and relax.

Café to Buckingham Palace

Once finished in Parker, we walked up Buckingham Palace Road and entered the Palace for our tour – I would always recommend booking in advance, as it's generally very full. They give you audio guides, which are really helpful and enable you to get a really good history of the Palace. You firstly enter a corridor and see the interior courtyard, as well as the state limousine, and then enter the beautiful main hall. When inside, you go up the grand staircase created by John Nash and see 19 state rooms, which serve as the working quarters of the Palace, the throne room, the picture gallery, the ballroom where official banquets take place, and the white drawing room. Being a fan of art, I loved the picture gallery, which has walls full of paintings, including works by Canaletto, Vermeer, Rembrandt and other greats of European art. The palace interior is beautiful, with extraordinary amounts of stucco work, priceless objects and sculptures, and the guides who help you along are all very professional. An interesting part of the tour is exiting out into the beautiful 40-acre gardens, and it's really unusual in London to get access to such a wide-open space with so many trees in the middle of the city. You get to do a meandering set walk, stopping at the gift shop, and then exit the gardens onto Grosvenor Place.

Dinner

At this point, we were running a little late on time, so we walked down to Brother Marcus, an Eastern Mediterranean restaurant about a 3-minute walk from Victoria Station. The interior was really interesting and modern, and the food was excellent. We ended up having flatbreads with dips, Greek sausage and a beautiful chocolate mousse for dessert, as well as a cocktail to finish the trip off! Once we had finished, we walked back to Victoria Station at about 6.30pm, ready to board the Gatwick Express back to the airport.